Boredom

15 January 2016

As I sat on a Hoboken-bound PATH train with my face in my phone, I looked up for a moment and watched as everyone on the train was buried in their phones, escaping boredom.

But is boredom something we should want to escape? Our phones are designed to make sure we’re always interacting with them. With all the apps and social networks that exist now it’s impossible to be bored. I found myself mindlessly scrolling through my Twitter feed without even reading it just to avoid doing nothing.

But maybe we should embrace doing nothing; embrace boredom. Boredom encourages creativity. Checking social media every so often is fine; there’s nothing wrong with catching up on the world. But take a break sometimes. Instead of looking to our phones anytime we have nothing else to do, embrace the boredom and see where it leads. Some of the best ideas have resulted from boredom.